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Keep your stick on the ice!
Remember that? Whether skating around a rink or chasing an orange ball down a street, it doesn’t matter. We all know what it means. It’s a Canadian-ism. It’s a cultural touchstone. It’s something that ties us together and makes us who we are. Something we all own. Just like those airwaves we all own.
But if that’s true why do only a few get to use them?
This summer a friend of mine went around shopping a cable-only project. Everybody loved it. We all thought it was time to pop a cork and celebrate...but then at the last second she was told that because the parent OTA is in such dire straits, they’d have to back out. In the meantime she should go home, hold her breath and come back in 2011.
I assume there are a million stories like that...and always will be. But what was the hardest to take about the whole thing it was that the decision was made by some huge corporate entity looming off over the horizon. It wasn’t that the network didn’t think the series was golden. It wasn’t that they didn’t think it was worth a pilot. It was that their hands were tied.
So what does she do now? Sit on her hands and wait? We toyed with the idea of doing it ourselves... and still might...but if she does that, why try and go back and put it on TV? Why not just go right to the intertubes?
Do emerging writers have options?
Hell yes. Tons of them. Thing is, almost none of them with conventional media.
Do I blame the CRTC? No not really. “It do what it do.”
And maybe that’s not so bad. We may still be a corporate afterthought, but at least we’ve got a DIY way to get the stories out. And really I guess that’s all I want. Somebody to listen to my wacky stories. Does it matter if it’s on TV or on the intertubes? No not really...though my mom would fersure find it more exciting if it was on TV and not that newfangled intertubes.
I kinda see it as a new beginning for Canadian stories.
Look at it this way - Canadians love Canlit and Cancon music right? Fair statement no?
Why? I think it’s simple...I think it’s because they’ve been given lots and lots of access to it! They get to pick and choose what they like and what they don’t like.
Right now, the complaints I hear from my brother and sister isn’t that there’s a Cancon rule...it’s that there isn’t enough CHOICE when it comes to Canadian stuff. So how do you get more choice in a market consolidated and debt leveraged over its head?
Dunno, I guess ya just go your own way and do it yourself.
Thanks to Dennis and Brandon for the soapbox. It was an honour.
1 comment:
Nathan -- I think there's definitely some validity to the comparison of Canadian film & TV to literature (also known as "books") and music. And lessons to be learned from successes in those media, particularly in terms of Can-Con regulations.
But my issue with the comparison is about numbers -- production cost and needed audience. It costs many millions for a film and many, many more millions for a TV series, versus considerably less for an album and way, way less for a book. Likewise, success for a film or series is gauged in the millions of audience members versus tens of thousands for a book or album.
New media certainly offers some pretty incredible opportunities for storytelling. But you're still talking about very low production cost and very low audience numbers. And, at the moment, very little income. Maybe that will change. Hopefully it will change.
But there's a significant difference in scale between film/TV and other media that warps the comparison. Considerably.
A good pep talk nonetheless. Thanks.
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